The Outrageous Grace of a Covenant-Keeping God Text: Ezekiel 16:53-59
Introduction: When Grace Becomes Offensive
We come now to a passage that ought to be deeply offensive to our natural, self-righteous sensibilities. If your sense of propriety is not rattled by what God says here, then you have not yet understood the gospel. We are in the middle of one of the most blistering, graphic, and unrelenting indictments in all of Scripture. God, through Ezekiel, has just spent fifty-two verses detailing the spiritual harlotry of Jerusalem. He describes her as a foundling, an abandoned infant left for dead, whom God rescued, raised, adorned, and married. And she took all His gifts, all His blessings, and used them to play the whore with every passing pagan nation. She was worse than a common prostitute; she paid her lovers. She was insatiable in her idolatry.
And just when we think the condemnation can go no further, just when we expect the final blow of righteous judgment to fall, God does something utterly unexpected. He introduces Sodom. He brings up the city that was proverbial for its wickedness, the city that God had annihilated with fire from heaven. And He says, in comparison to you, Jerusalem, Sodom looks righteous. Your sin is so profound, so treacherous, that you make Sodom and your apostate sister Samaria look good. And then comes the hammer blow, the scandalous promise that turns all our merit-based religion on its head. God promises to restore them. Not just Jerusalem. He promises to restore Sodom.
This is the kind of grace that makes the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son furious. This is the kind of mercy that made Jonah angry enough to want to die. It is a grace that seems unjust, unfair, and altogether too much. And that is precisely the point. If your concept of grace is something you could have reasonably expected, something you feel you basically deserve on a good day, then your god is too small and your gospel is no gospel at all. The gospel is not about God rewarding the worthy; it is about God raising the dead. And here, God promises to raise the deadest of the dead, to show that His grace is not just greater than our sin, but greater than all our categories of what we think is possible or even appropriate.
This passage is a frontal assault on all human pride. It is designed to strip Jerusalem of her last shred of self-justification so that she might be ready to receive a grace that is truly all of grace. And it is a necessary lesson for us, because the church is always tempted by the same pride, the same assumption that we are somehow better than the Sodomites out there. God's message through Ezekiel is clear: you are not. And your only hope is the same outrageous, unmerited, covenant-keeping grace that would restore Sodom itself.
The Text
"Nevertheless, I will return their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, and along with them your own captivity, in order that you may bear your dishonor and feel dishonor for all that you have done when you become a comfort to them. Your sisters, Sodom with her daughters and Samaria with her daughters, will return to their former state, and you with your daughters will also return to your former state. As the name of your sister Sodom was not heard in your mouth in your day of lofty pride, before your wickedness was uncovered, so now you have become the reproach of the daughters of Edom and of all who are around her, of the daughters of the Philistines, those all around you who despise you. You have borne the penalty of your lewdness and abominations,” declares Yahweh. For thus says Lord Yahweh, “I will also do with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath by breaking the covenant."
(Ezekiel 16:53-59 LSB)
A Shocking Restoration (v. 53-55)
We begin with the promise that lands like a thunderclap.
"Nevertheless, I will return their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, and along with them your own captivity," (Ezekiel 16:53)
The word "captivity" here is not just about a political exile. For Sodom, it is a captivity to death and judgment itself. God is promising a restoration from the ultimate consequence of sin. And notice the order. God doesn't say, "I will restore you, and by the way, I'll bring Sodom and Samaria along for the ride." He puts the most notorious sinners first in line. Sodom, the byword for perversion, and Samaria, the capital of Israel's northern apostasy, are named before Jerusalem. This is a deliberate humiliation. Jerusalem, the city of the great king, the location of the temple, is told to get in the back of the line behind the reprobates.
This is God's consistent method. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. He does this to demolish all pride. The purpose of this shocking grace is explicitly stated: "in order that you may bear your dishonor and feel dishonor for all that you have done when you become a comfort to them" (v. 54). God's goal is not to make them feel good about themselves. His goal is to make them so ashamed of their sin that they are finally ready for true grace. The logic is devastating. Jerusalem's sin was so great that God's judgment on them would actually be a "comfort" to Sodom and Samaria. It would make them feel vindicated, as if to say, "See? We weren't so bad after all. Look at what God's chosen people did!"
God's grace here is a severe mercy. He will restore them, yes, but in such a way that they are stripped of all boasting. They will be restored alongside the very people they once despised. Verse 55 repeats the promise: "Your sisters, Sodom with her daughters and Samaria with her daughters, will return to their former state, and you with your daughters will also return to your former state." This is corporate solidarity in restoration. Just as they were united in their sin, they will be united in a grace they did not deserve. This points forward to the mystery of the gospel, where God would graft wild, pagan branches into His olive tree, right alongside the natural branches, so that no one could boast before Him (Romans 11).
Pride Before the Fall (v. 56-58)
God now reminds them of the arrogance that led to their downfall.
"As the name of your sister Sodom was not heard in your mouth in your day of lofty pride, before your wickedness was uncovered..." (Ezekiel 16:56-57a)
In their days of prosperity and pride, Jerusalem was too haughty to even mention Sodom. To them, Sodom was the ultimate "other." They were the righteous, the chosen, the insiders. Sodom was the cautionary tale, the wicked city they defined themselves against. They used Sodom's sin to feel better about their own. This is the essence of self-righteousness. It always requires a despised out-group to look down upon. But God says their pride was a mask. It existed "before your wickedness was uncovered." The Babylonian invasion didn't create their sin; it simply exposed what was there all along.
And what is the result of this exposure? A humiliating reversal. "...so now you have become the reproach of the daughters of Edom and of all who are around her, of the daughters of the Philistines, those all around you who despise you" (v. 57b). The very pagan nations they once looked down upon now look down on them. Edom and Philistia, their old enemies, are mocking them. Jerusalem has become the new Sodom. She has become the new cautionary tale. This is the covenant curse in action. If you break my covenant, says God, I will make you a hissing and a byword among the nations (Deut. 28:37). You who once boasted in your special status will be brought lower than everyone else.
Verse 58 makes the cause of this humiliation explicit: "You have borne the penalty of your lewdness and abominations, declares Yahweh." This is not an accident. This is not bad luck. This is the direct, personal, judicial sentence of a holy God. Their suffering was the necessary consequence of their sin. God is not a cosmic vending machine that dispenses blessings indiscriminately. He is a righteous judge, and His covenant has real teeth. To bear the penalty is to receive the wages that sin has earned.
Covenant Judgment and Covenant Faithfulness (v. 59)
The final verse of our text seems, at first, to be a declaration of pure judgment, a final word of condemnation. But in the context of the outrageous promise of restoration, it becomes something more.
"For thus says Lord Yahweh, 'I will also do with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath by breaking the covenant.'" (Ezekiel 16:59)
God promises perfect reciprocity. "I will do with you as you have done." They broke the covenant, so God will bring the covenant curses upon them. They despised the oath they swore to Him at Sinai, so He will treat them as oath-breakers. This is the principle of lex talionis, an eye for an eye. This is perfect, terrifying justice. If the story ended here, there would be no hope. They would be utterly consumed, just as Sodom was.
But we have already heard the "nevertheless" of verse 53. We already know God has promised to restore Sodom. So how can both be true? How can God execute perfect justice and yet show scandalous mercy? The answer is found in the verses that immediately follow this passage, where God promises to establish an "everlasting covenant" with them (Ezek. 16:60-63). The answer is the gospel.
God will indeed do to them as they have done. He will pour out the full penalty for their covenant-breaking. But He will not pour it out on them. He will pour it out upon a substitute. He will take all the lewdness, all the abominations, all the despised oaths, and He will place them upon His own Son. On the cross, Jesus Christ became Jerusalem. He became Sodom. He bore our dishonor. He was uncovered in His wickedness, though He had none of His own. He became a reproach, despised by those around Him. He bore the full, undiluted penalty that we had earned by breaking God's covenant.
Conclusion: Grace That Makes You Blush
God's purpose in this severe word is not condemnation, but a particular kind of salvation, a salvation that produces profound humility. The end of the chapter says it all: "Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign Lord" (Ezek. 16:63).
True grace, gospel grace, does not puff us up. It shuts our mouths. It makes us blush. When we finally see that our sin made us worse than Sodom, and that God's grace restored us anyway, not because of some hidden goodness in us, but for His own name's sake, all our prideful arguments and self-justifications fall silent. We are left with nothing to say.
This is the ground on which the Church stands. We are a congregation of restored Sodomites. We are a gathering of people who were dead in our abominations, proud in our self-righteousness, and deserving of fire from heaven. But God, in His outrageous mercy, made an atonement for us. He restored our captivity to sin and death. He did to Jesus what we had done, so that He could do for us what only He could do.
Therefore, we must never look out at the world, at the modern-day Sodoms, with haughty pride. We must never think we are fundamentally different. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. Our only hope, and the world's only hope, is this offensive, scandalous, covenant-keeping grace of God. It is a grace that humbles us, silences us, and then, and only then, makes us a true comfort to a world that needs to know that God's mercy is wide enough even for them.